Perception,Attribution, andJudgment of OthersIn 1991, Bank of Montreal (BMO) executivesdiscovered an alarming statistic. Althoughwomen made up 75 percent of the com-pany’s workforce, only 9 percent were inexecutive positions, and 13 percent were insenior management positions. Overall,91percent of the company’s womenemployees were in nonmanagement posi-tions. CEO Tony Comper described the bank’s performance in achievingequality for women as “dismal.”In order to address this problem, the executives created a Task Force onthe Advancement of Women to identify and break down the barriers towomen’s advancement and to develop an action plan. Members of the taskforce interviewed almost 300 employees and conducted the company’slargest employee survey ever, with more than 9,000 responses.Based on the results, the task force identified three major barriers towomen’s advancement. First, it was found that many employees in the com-pany had false assumptions about women. In fact, a key finding was thatwomen were not advancing because of stereotypical attitudes, myths, and“conventional wisdom.” For example, women at the bank were perceived aseither too young or too old to compete with men for promotions. They wereseen as less committed to their careers because they have babies and leavethe bank while their children are young. It was believed that more womenneeded to be better educated to compete in significant numbers with menand that women don’t have the “the right stuff” to compete for more seniorjobs. Second, the task force discovered that the bank had failed to provideB a n k o fM o n t r e a lLearning ObjectivesAfter reading Chapter 3, you should be able to:1Define perceptionand discuss some of thegeneral factors that influence perception.2Explain Bruner’s model of the perceptualprocess and describe the main biases inperson perception.3Describe how people form attributionsaboutthe causes of behaviour.4Discuss various biases in attribution.5Discuss the concepts of workforce diversityand valuing diversity.6Discuss how racial, ethnic, gender, and agestereotypesaffect organizational behaviourand what organizations can do to managediversity.7Define trustperceptions and perceived orga-nizational supportand discuss how organiza-tions can foster positive perceptions of trustand support.8Discuss how perception and perceptual biasesaffect the outcomes of selection interviewsand performance appraisals and describesome techniques to improve the accuracy ofthem.C h a p t e r 3

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67The Bank of Montreal hasreceived many awards for itsWorkplace Equality Programssince 1990 when CEO TonyComper made a commitment togive all employees equalopportunity to reach their careerpotential. Today, the BMO is amodel for how to tie workplacediversity to business success.

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